Super Why Contest Entry

Well, Kids CBC was running a contest to win a Super Why DVD. All kids had to do was draw a picture of their favorite Super Why character. Zoe's favorite is Wonder Red (sound familiar?) and so she drew a picture. The first and only time I saw the promotion for this contest was last week (maybe maybe MAYBE the week before). She brought it up again this morning when we were having our early morning breakfast together (she gets up super early and we have breakfast together before I leave for the gym on MWF), so I encouraged her to get out her markers and draw a picture of Wonder Red and told her we would send it in to Kids CBC. Right now I just have to say, Thank you, CBC for letting us scan pictures in and email them for contests or that child may never enter a contest. But boo for me and a little boo for Kids CBC for not running the contest long enough. This afternoon when I checked on the Kids CBC website, I discovered that not only had the contest ended, but they'd already awarded the prizes! Sheesh. I feel like I just heard about this thing! Anyway, since Zoe didn't get to send in her beautiful Wonder Red drawing for the contest and I thought it was so good that more people had to see it, here it is...

There are some important features to notice on Wonder Red up there: like her "half oval" helmet. It kind of blends in with her hair, but that's what Zoe drew first. The things below her head are not shoulder pads, it's actually her cape (fluttering behind her). She has her "word basket" in her hand and she wears clunky roller skates, so that's what's on her feet. A pretty good representation, I think.

craft evangelist

I started a craft blog. Maybe you're thinking, "duh, isn't THIS a craft blog?" Well, I had sort of been putting everything here (which isn't much of anything a lot of the time) and then I decided that I wanted a different place to be the crafty me and the person me. It kind of goes agains the sub-title of this blog (for all the parts of my life), but oh well. For fun I put some analytics on my blog, so I can track what people are reading and what brings them here to my blog. Mostly for people that I don't know, who come through internet searches and stuff. My top searches are almost exclusively for my cakes. And the review of Death By Chocolate here in Edmonton. Anyway, it creeped me out a bit that people looking for cake ideas may have found stories about my daughter pooping on the potty, so I wanted a separate place for that. I also wanted to experiment with advertisements without messing with this blog, so hence the new one.

So far, no one has sent me any money for selling out and putting advertisements on my craft blog, but it's pretty likely that it's not very well visited. Lazy me only just got around to putting analytics on it today, so I have no idea what the traffic is like there. If you want to head on over and click around on some advertisements, you can do that. A friend of mine did a giveaway when she reached $10 in ad revenue on her blog...

The beautiful thing about my craft blog is that after much thinking, I finally found a good name for it: craft evangelist. If you don't like the name, please don't tell me because it took me an extraordinarily long time to come up with it and I really like it. It embodies one of the things I love about crafty stuff... any stuff really... if it's great, you have to share it.

Anyways, craft evangelist is where I get to be the crazy crafty me, where my fellow mommy friends can go to feel inadequate about themselves (... joking... you guys are so serious) and marvel at my skills (ha!). Well, not just that, it's also the perfect place to share the super awesome internet finds, mostly crafty, but sometimes otherwise cool. If I find a cool giveaway, I'll post it there. Or freebie patterns (because I'm so cheap, I have a really hard time paying for a pattern).

So stop on by, see what my crafty self has been making and sharing.

Getting Away

I can't begin to explain to you the excitement that is beginning to take over here. No, it's not the excitement of Halloween or Christmas, although we do love holidays and getting candy. Honestly, Zoe is only just catching on to the passage of time and how near or far away things are. And how things work. (tangent) When we tell Zoe about the plans that we've made for the evening, we say, "Hey guess who's coming over tonight? ... Keegan & Ryann (her best friends) ." And then it would happen. So, Zoe started saying, "Guess who's coming over tonight?" and I'd say, "uh... no one, (I hope)" and she'd say, "Keegan & Ryann!!!" and then it was all sadness and disappointment when we would say, "No, they're not coming over tonight." But that's how it seemed to work for us, right? All we had to do was say it, and it was so. As if we were like gods creating social events: "Let there be friends to fill the house and make you happy and sleep over... and it was so. And there was evening and morning, the 2,208,409th day."

Anyways, the excitement over here is all mine. The kids don't even know. I'm going AWAY! Did you see that? I'm going away? Yeah, all by myself. I haven't been sans kids since February of 2007. I'm going to Abbotsford to visit my friend, Carol, and just to get away. WestJet had super good deals on flights this fall, so I get to go away pretty reasonably and hang out with my dear friend and well, I just don't know what I'll do with myself! Maybe knit.

I'm still trying to determine whether it is safe to try to knit on the airplane. I am totally willing to buy some bamboo knitting needles or something if it means that they'll let me knit on the plane with them, but I would be very sad to have them taken away if I couldn't get through security with them. I suppose I could try and just have Dan wait until I make it through security and I could give them to him if they don't allow them through. Seriously, though. I was on a flight where I lost a crochet hook to security, which has a blunt end and is all of 5 maybe 6 inches long, when someone else went through with a metal pointy ended umbrella. Tell me which would do more damage and be more of a weapon... seriously. And there is NOTHING about crafty items (other than scissors) on the WestJet website.

I tell ya, I feel like a girl in junior high waiting for a sleepover... sleepin' in... no cleaning up after anyone... ahhh...

RE: Cereal

Dear Family,

Please know that the cereal at the bottom of the container is every bit the cereal at the top of the container. I promise that it is not poisoned, nor has it gone stale (or at least it wouldn't go stale if you would eat it in a timely manner), nor has it been altered in any way. Eat of it. Eat all of it. Though it be vile to you, eat it. I promise it will nourish your body or at least temporarily remove your hunger if you eat of it.

Do not drive your mother to insanity by leaving only small amounts of even favoured cereals in the cereal storers, while opening new boxes of cereal she bought on sale. Finish the cereal! Eat it all. It will not harm you, nay, it will be good, though possibly a wee bit crumby.


Your loving wife/mother.

How to have an oven fire, but not burn the house down and still have pizza

So the other evening, Dan is out and I am making pizza with the kids. It occurs to me at about 4:30 when I am starting supper, that while I have not taken out any meat to thaw and have not made pizza dough, I still have about a 1/2 batch of Boule dough in the fridge from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I quickly search the pizza chapter to see which recipe is to be used for pizza. To my delight, Boule dough (the master recipe) was on the list! Even better, it does not require any further rising or resting or anything. Just preheat the oven and stone and slide the pizza on! Sweet. I have all the ingredients for pizza (we don't require meat on our pizza: just sauce, fresh basil and cheese), so I am ready to go. I need to make up my mom's pizza sauce recipe (it's got wonderful flavor) and shred the cheese. So I heat up the oven and Zoe and I begin to play with the wet dough.



The recipe requires the oven to be very hot... 550 degrees, if yours goes that high (mine does). So I heat it up and turn on the exhaust fan, as the book suggests. It's getting smokier, but since that what the book warns of, I make sure the windows are open and the exhaust is on high and don't worry about it too much. It is only when I open the oven, after about 5 minutes, to check that the pizza is browning evenly that I notice some flames at the back of the oven, where some of the cornmeal has been moved off the baking stone and erupted in flame as it has hit the element. Quickly, I close the oven, and like any 21st century mom, run to my computer and quickly type "oven fire" in my Google search engine. I follow this link and read these instructions.

I am torn. (2) Turn off the oven? But I want pizza. And more importantly: my. kids. want. pizza. I knew we weren't at step 3 just yet, we shouldn't have to leave the house. One quick aside: If you have followed step 3, how are you supposed to follow step 4? I mean, yeah, you can grab your cell phone and call 9-1-1, but how do you know you cannot put out the fire if you have left the house immediately? Silly eHow.

So, here are my new and improved instructions:

How to have an oven fire, but not burn the house down and still have pizza
by Teddi Taylor

Step 1 Notice flames in oven.
Step 2 Close the oven door to cut off oxygen supply.
Step 3 Turn off the oven. Turn on exhaust fan if you have not already done so.
Step 4 Do not leave the house immediately. Open windows instead.
Step 5 Wait about 3-5 times longer than cooking time called for in recipe.
Step 6 Remove pizza from oven.
Step 7 Allow pizza to cool.
Step 8 Eat pizza.
Step 9 Clean out oven when it has completely cooled.

My Mom's Pizza Sauce Recipe

1 5 oz can tomato paste
1 14 oz can tomato sauce
1 5 oz can water
1 Tbsp brown sugar
2 shakes cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tsp garlic powder
2 Tbsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp onion salt

Mix together and spread on your favorite crust.

Hamburger & French Fries Cake

Today is Simon's 2nd birthday. We had a party for him. Instead of making a cake, I made a bunch of hamburgers and french fries, since he's such a fast food loving kid (not really). I got the idea from this post from Bakerella.

Okay, so we didn't forgo cake altogether! It's a brownie cupcake hamburger and sugar cookie french fries! So fun and so tasty (though I found the hamburger to be a little too sweet for my taste).

Duncan Hines yellow cake cupcakes, made a little on the short side. I got 35 cupcakes out of one mix.


Orangey-yellow marshmallow fondant... perfect processed cheese colour!


Tomato red marshmallow fondant for ripe red tomatoes.


Vanilla pudding... mayonnaise.

Brownies.... for the hamburger patties. To stretch my batter a bit, I added 1/2 cup of homemade applesauce instead of increasing the butter, and increased the dry ingredients by 1/3 except the sugar (I figured 3 cups was quite enough). Instead of cracking and falling like they usually do, they were even and fluffy, a little more cake-y, but tasty and beautiful looking.

The "cheese" rolled out and cut for hamburgers. I used a ruler (to make them square) and a pizza cutter and did my best to cut in straight lines. But it didn't matter that much.

The "tomatoes" rolled and cut. I used a biscuit cutter for these and the brownie "hamburgers."

All the ingredients ready for assembly. The bowl is full of the brownies. I squished each one of them before assembling. They were too tall otherwise. The squishing made them a little less perfectly round, which added to the authentic look.

"Ketchup" "Mustard" and Coconut "Lettuce"

Hamburgers assembed.

Dan taste-testing.


Hamburgers and fries assembled for our friends at the Legislature Grounds.

Me and Simon with his hamburger and french fries.


Delicious! And totally fun!

My Child, the Art Prodigy

Okay, so here is the picture my daughter drew today of her friend R (the large one) and R's little brother T. I'm not sure where her very good friend (who is somewhat of a slapstick comedian, which endears himself to Zoe) K is (he is the older brother of R & T), why he didn't make it into this picture, but she did draw a picture of him last night, so maybe that explains that.

I particularly enjoy the zig-zag bodies, meaning something like, "there's a whole lot of something going on in there" as well as the long beautiful eyelashes on her friend. Also, it is very clear that T is the little brother (even though he is really not that much smaller than her friend in real life).

...

oh and while writing this post, Dan found this other drawing she was just working on


I asked Zoe who the people in this picture were... And there's K, right there! The other two are Zoe and R. It's obvious who's who, right? Obviously the two with the long beautiful eyelashes are Zoe and R, but K doesn't have eyelashes (though in reality he has quite long eyelashes). And that scribble at the end of K's arm? That's his transformer (I think she just made that up at the last minute when I asked her, because she did an awful lot of humming and hawing about it.)